TaskRabbit brings Chores 2.0 to London

A new website has launched that aims to be the “eBay of tasks” – creating a marketplace for people to do tasks like DIY, home cleaning and stuff. All you have to do is provide TaskRabbit with your address and it’ll match you up with people who can be at your service.

What’s useful is that not only can you search by what you’re looking for (“I want someone to help me put up some shelves”), but the results will show you their rate – so you can directly compare. Plus all of the “Taskers”, as they call them get their photo displayed, and there’s a bio too, to convince you that you’re not letting some crazy knife killer into your house. Once you’ve matched up with a Tasker, you can converse with them in private messages, to nail down the exact details of what you need. TaskRabbit also seems to control the payment – which seems nice and convenient, and useful for keeping everything above board (and this is presumably how they plan to make some money).

It certainly sounds like a useful proposition – doing for difficult and tedious home chores what Zipcar did for car rental and what Hailocab did for Taxis – all controlled through a simple website or app. Much easier than Googling around and hoping you’ll be able to find someone to help you move house.

The US version of the site, which has been running for longer, claims to have 15,000 background checked Taskers – but it appears to be very early days for the UK. When searching for Taskers to help clean my flat in South London, the results were the same people as featured in demo, in which Hoxton was searched. Still – presumably the number of British Taskers will keep going up.

Similarly – the only options available at the moment appear to be DIY help, cleaning and “Christmas Helper” (whatever that means) – here’s hoping that it’s expanded in future to include plumbers, electricians and locksmiths too.